Secret Summers. Glynda Shaw

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СКАЧАТЬ northwest corner. From out here I could see what hadn’t been apparent from my bedroom window. The portion of the house that comprised my room, bathroom-hallway alcove, and part of the kitchen weren’t just braced from below but were braced by structure that went down, fully enclosed, to the beach under the cliff. There was a door down there and clearly a room or rooms within the lower part of the tower, probably more than one story if I were any judge.

      Aunt Claire led me along a path through the scrub brush, which grew near the cliff on this side of the house, and down a nearly concealed pathway that led downward at an angle away from my room and descended beneath rock outcroppings and between dead tree trunks down to the beach, gaining the sand just above the high water mark. ”Don’t ever try this in the dark,” Claire advised.

      And why would I even think of something so stupid? I remarked, though not aloud. With my aunt leading and me doing my best not to snag my still rather unfamiliar clothes on branches and sharp rocks, we worked our way down the trail. A pebble skittering past alerted me that Monique was now catching up. Aunt Claire, reaching the sand, turned back southward to come up again abreast of the house. Monique caught my eye and pointed back toward my bedroom looking meaningful. I began a question, but she placed her finger on her lips and both of us fell into step.

      “My office,” Claire said, glancing at the solid door in the downward extension of the house. I saw the “tower” was based on concrete pylons with three feet of empty space beneath the lowest floor. Even an unusually high tide wouldn’t likely swamp the lower level. A set of four aluminum stairs, whitened in the salt air, mounted to the door. ”Plenty of time for that another day,” she said. At another time I might have objected, but just now I was more interested in getting topside again to see what Monique had found. I’m afraid I heard only part of what my aunt was telling me as we continued south along the beach.

      “You didn’t hear so much about the Pacific Coast as the Atlantic, back in the old days, I mean,” she told us. “There was fur trading all along this coast and shipping from China and the Hawaiian Islands. Smugglers and pirates aplenty, though the history books don’t speak much of them. It was an exciting place to be a century and a half ago.” She ran on like this for perhaps a mile or so down the beach and then back again, with us aching to turn toward home, but Monique kept her mouth shut, so I figured whatever it was it must be something not to be shared with our elders. Finally, we reached again the foot of the tower. Aunt Claire fished a ring of keys from her skirt pocket. ”You two go on up if you want to,” she said meditatively. I’ve got something to do down here.”

      We didn’t need to be asked twice!

      Footprints

      Monique sprinted up the trail like a goat in petticoats, both of us having resumed our stage of somewhat overdress from last evening. At the top of the cliff, she looked back over the edge to make sure we weren’t being watched, then ran toward the house, stopping short beneath my side window. She pointed to the ground. There in the damp earth, which was neither flower bed nor lawn exactly but mostly just mud, were footprints, obviously not ours and not likely belonging to Claire either. They were large and roughly patterned like heavy boots might leave. They pointed first toward the cliff, then doubled back to swerve around and parallel the road east of the house, fading out as mud gave way to grass and grass to gravel. Though I fancied I saw some remnant smudges on the hard-packed roadway, there was no telling where our visitor had gone or where he’d come from.

      “Do you think?” I asked. Monique wagged her head slowly from the footprints in the yard to the road out front and back again.

      “I don’t know,” she said, “but who else would it be?”

      “Will he come back, do you suppose?”

      “He’s following us,” Monique said, “just as we said last night. Quick, let’s go inside.” Not sure what going inside was supposed to solve since no one was here with us just now, I followed nevertheless and soon apprehended her intent. ”Where’d you put The Book?” she demanded when we’d gained the comparative security of my room.

      “You put it under my pillow yesterday,” I said. ”I didn’t have time to move it before we left for the party.”

      “Well, it’s not here,” Monique inspected my unmade bed. ”Would your aunt have taken it?”

      “How should I know?” I asked. ”I’ve only known her, what, two days now?”

      “Good point,” she said. ”I think I know her pretty well though, and I can’t imagine her hiding something from you like that, at least without saying something first.”

      “Hmm,” I said.

      Both of us, having the same idea, headed for the closet. Monique got there first, but gaining the top of the ladder, she was confronted by the box, locked and in place.

      “Where was that thing when we left here yesterday?” she inquired.

      “Under my bed,” I said. ”I didn’t have time to move it either. Aunt Claire was watching me.”

      “Can we open it again?”

      “Let’s see.” I climbed up beside her and began the safecracker’s trick of feeling my way along the concealed spindle through the hole in the bottom of the box. Soon enough, I had the box loose from the floor, the familiar thumping issuing from within.

      “The thing I want to know,” Monique said, pointing at the stub of the inch-wide peg sticking up out of the attic floor, “is how in hell did this get back here and locked in place?”

      “Well,” I said, “I suppose if somebody could get the box unlocked they could somehow work the spindle up into bottom of the box.”

      “No way,” Monique objected. She took a hold of the spindle top between thumb and fingers, pulled, twisted, pulled again. It gave a little but sprang forcefully back into the floor when released. ”I think it has to be sent up from underneath.”

      “Underneath where?” I asked. ”That would be down …”

      “Somewhere below the floor,” Monique finished for me.

      “Yeah, but that’s crazy,” I said. “We were all at your house last night. I heard my aunt and your mom still snoring when I got up. And besides, there’s no way up from underneath.”

      “Somebody else must’ve been here,” Monique said, “and found a way.”

      Then both of us together said, “Him.”

      “Gosh,” I said, free from Mother’s stricture that gosh was just a sidewise way of saying God. ”We’re in trouble.”

      I suppose there could have been many explanations for the bit of tidying affected in my room but only one leant itself to our imaginings at that particular moment, that of a shadowy figure, having easy access to all portions of the house while its occupants were away for the night. Would anyone dare penetrate the house while my formidable aunt was in residence? I wondered. But who could say? Did she know of this Dark Man who we knew only from a brief sighting on the beach and the mark of his supposed footprints near the house? Same answer.

      “Let’s see if it’s the same that’s in here,” Monique said at last. We went through the same process as yesterday with the dowel and the key and the box opened readily enough. The scuffed brown volume was lying inside.

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